1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a programmable apparatus which acts to increase phone line connection capacity. More particularly, the programmable apparatus is integrated into a phone system, such as that of a hotel, for example, which has a finite number of active outgoing telephone lines which is less than the number of internal telephone handsets, for increasing the number of active ports above the finite number by linking to a website through use of a browser of a web linked computer, the website providing a substantially unlimited number of external telephone access lines which can be used by all internal telephone handset lines of the hotel, simultaneously, as necessary, to accommodate telephone line accessibility by all internal handset lines, either manually or automatically.
2. Prior Art
Heretofore, capacity of simultaneously available telephone lines within an establishment, such as a hotel, for example, is always less than the number of internal telephone handset lines due to prohibitive costs of accommodation of all handsets since, typically, all internal handsets are never in use simultaneously. However, there are occasions, when demand is greater than such lesser number of available external telephone lines, causing users to have to wait for line availability, which may cause patrons to turn away from use of the establishment in the future.
To date, there has been no way around the supply/demand dilemma except to provide a number of external lines equal to the number of handsets therefor, at impractical cost, and thus it is never done.
According to the invention there is provided a programmable electronic patch panel controller apparatus for use in connecting a multiplicity of internal telephone handset lines to internet accessible external telephone lines which are accessed via a browser of a processor which is directed to a particular website affording access to external web based telephone lines, the apparatus comprising a controller incorporating at least:
a motherboard;
connections for functionally engaging a plurality of telephone handset lines to the apparatus;
a keyboard connection for connecting a keyboard to the motherboard for manual keyed input thereto;
a monitor connection for the motherboard for visibility of parameters and information provided via a monitor engaged to the connection;
an ethernet port for creating a connection between the motherboard and the particular website via the processor incorporating the browser;
active and passive port boards functionally engaged to the motherboard;
a programmable hard drive processor functionally engaged to the motherboard;
a memory module functionally engaged to the hard drive;
a power supply;
and programming within the processor of the apparatus to produce latching and unlatching between active and passive port pairs of the active and passive port boards as necessary through commands received via the web browser from a server computer to assure connection of the plurality of handset telephone lines to the web based external telephone lines.
Still further according to the invention there is provided a method for using the electronic patch panel controller apparatus for accomplishing the specific goal thereof.